Philip Roth’s crusade to help Czechoslovak dissident writers under
Communism

Towering Jewish-American author Philip Roth has died at the age of 85. And
while most of the tributes will rightly focus on his many prize winning
works over 60 years, there was another aspect to his life as well: the
timely help he gave to dissident Czechoslovak writers after 1968 and the
crushing of the so-called Prague Spring.

Philip Roth in 2008, photo: ČTK/AP/Richard Drew
Philip Roth made a name for himself with critical acclaim, controversy, and
commercial success stemming from the 1969 novel Portnoy’s Complaint,
whose protagonist is plagued by lust and ever more elaborate masturbatory
acts.

But in the early 1970’s he was still teaching at the University of
Pennsylvania, writing, and exploring the wider literary landscape. And,
given his Jewish background, it’s not surprising that at one stage he was
gripped by the works of the early 20th century Czech-German writer Franz
Kafka.

And it was in a bid to get closer to Kafka that Roth decided to visit the
writer’s home city, Prague, for the first time as part of a broader trip
to Europe. He recalls the date as being around 1973 but some reports put
the visit earlier.

Roth had a publisher in Prague and set up a meeting. A reception with the
publisher and editors followed. But later one woman took Roth aside and
explained that these were all the lackeys who had been put in place by the
normalisation regime after the Soviet-led invasion of 1968. Most of the
previous staff had been sacked and been given menial jobs. That launched
Roth’s rapid learning curve about Czechoslovakia and his crusade to help
the literary dissidents.

Back in New York, Roth met up with Czech exiles and these included figures
from the film world, Jiří Weiss, Ivan Passer, Miloš Forman. And in
return trips to Prague over the following years he met with dissident
writers, Ivan Klíma, Milan Kundera, Bohumil Hrabal, Ludvík Vaculík. And
Roth put his mind to trying to help them with their everyday needs as well
as boosting their reputations abroad.

Philip Roth, photo: Public Domain
Roth described how he helped his growing group of dissident friends and
contacts by launching a book series with the well known publisher Penguin
called ‘Writers from the Other Europe.’ The books had already by been
published in English but had disappeared. The idea was they would be
brought together and noticed.

The Czech experience helped provide the background for Roth’s 1985 novel
‘The Prague Orgy’ in which his alter ego, Nathan Zukerman, travels to
communist Prague to seek out the manuscript of a Yiddish author.

Roth’s efforts did not go unmissed by the Czechoslovak communist secret
police, the StB, and he was refused visas to visit Czechoslovakia from 1977
until after the regime fell in 1989. Roth’s efforts were later recognised
in post-communist Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic with a series of
literary awards – including the first Franz Kafka prize in 2001.